So, we're staring at this ceremony, like something out of the Mezo-American version of the Ten Commandments, and we know...
We've gotta bust this up. The fighter has counted at LEAST a dozen different clan sigils, there's several crude human effigies burning here and there around the pyramid, and there's that group of evil humans who worship a blood-drinking crocidile headed ape.
The monk's player lets us start making plans, asking pertinent questions and putting in some good input. We plot and scheme, and the GM watches the clock. Several times they sacrifice goblins. One cowman goes down from the dancing, and as we watch, his soul visibly leaves and goes up to the floating cow-head.
We gotta stop this now.
The Rogue, the Ranger, and the Barbarian slip out into the jungle, and bring back a half dozen prisoners. The drums are pounding, and we're warned that soon we'll have to make willpower checks against the primal beat. ("Huh, the rythm will get you, huh?" "Shut up, Tim")
They hold one bent backwards over a stump, and the Druid performs a "flying eagle" and pours the blood on a huge ancient tree, calling to its spirit. I grab one and slash it's throat, using the magic to heal myself, then do another two to "power up" so to speak. The Barbarian is silently singing his death song, and the Fighter rolls his shoulders and checks the edge of his sword.
With a crackling groan, the tree tears it's roots free from the earth. "CLEANSE THE FOUL TAINT!" she calls out. I barely make a reflex save as the tree attempts to stomp on me. "NOT HIM! THE BULLMEN! STOP THE RITUAL!" (Everyone is laughing, including me) The tree wades out there, I finish carving the symbol of Vecna into my own chest, and we attack.
I follow the tree out, using my innate levitation (The GM added some tweaks to the classes here and there. I can levitate, slowly, 2" off the ground, mainly for looks) and covered in flames. This is a huge gamble. There's at least 500 of them out there, the GM is rapidly scribbling, since we opted to attack. He admitted he should have prepped for that, figuring we'd decide it was better to do a preemptive strike than fight them on thier terms.
The Druid is making Willpower Checks to control this huge mobile tree. It sweeps a group of shocked cowmen from in front of it, and I hover by. The Rogue and the Ranger are silently killing the guards on the cages of "sacrifices" as I hover up the steps of the pyramid, my levitate's basic flames scorching the blood on the steps. I reach the top, and the cowmen are staring at me in cow-eyed shock.
"I AM SADUUL CORTEZ! YOU FOLLOW A PATHETIC AND FLAMELESS GOD! YOU WILL BOW TO ME, YOUR NEW GOD! I SUMMON THE GOD KILLER TO CAST DOWN YOUR PUNY LOWING GOD!" I cook off a teleport other, summoning the monk, whose covered himself in alchemist's fire and lit himself on fire while I was making the speech. My comrades are arming the former prisoners with the weapons they were carrying in cloth wraps that we salvaged from the tragic shipwreck.
The clerics scream in rage as they hear my pronouncement, then scream in shock when the monk appears. Skull fronts at his shoulders, with spinal columns running down the outside of his biceps, the front of a cowman skeleton on his chest, held there with his former chains, and entirely wreathed in fire.
He moves in on the clerics, while I start raining down fireballs, dipping my hands in thier bowls of ceremonial blood. Three fireballs, and I'm nearly dead. The monk grapples a cleric and wins, spinning him around.
My wizard plunges his hands into the cleric's chest and pulls free the heart, using it to power my magic. With a roar, the cowmen below take the relief from the fireballs and begin charging up the pyramid's steps.
"We're pretty much dead, aren't we?" The monk's player asks while the GM handles what the rest of the party is doing that round.
"It's starting to look that way, doesn't it?" I reply.
"How many hitpoint do you have left?"
"Less than a third, I used that to recharge my spell capacity more than heal myself."
"Yup, we're boned. I'm down to about half."
The fighter and the ranger lead the armed prisoners into the back of the group with sword flashing and knives plunging, the cleric summons up a
Gang of Knife Fighting Monkey's (Don't ask... it's a loooong story) in the midst of a group of cowmen charging her, the druid directs the giant tree to start tearing apart the totems and effigies, the barbarian begins singing as he wades into a group of painted and obviously anointed cowmen.
The monk kills the last cleric, and I stand at the top of the pyramid. The image of the bull's head roars in rage at what is happening to its worshipers. I've got about three spells woth of my spell-load left, the monk is badly injured, and there's several HUNDRED pissed off cowmen charging up the side of this pyramid.
"Wait for it..." I say, grinning. I ask a quick question via note and get my answer.
"Saduul..."
The barbarian is something right out of Conan, the axe tearing into cowmen and felling them as he yells out what all barbarian players so live to: "ERYTHNUL COUNT THE DEAD!" The fighter is standing on top of a pile of skulls calling out "TO ME, MEN, TO ME!" with his sword upraised. He takes a javelin in the chest, but makes his Willpower Check, coughing out blood as he yells "RALLY TO ME, MEN, RALLY!" The giant tree is snapping totem poles, kicking over piles of skulls, smashing effigies, and scattering attackers. The druid's ears and eyes are bleeding from the struggle to control the creature she summoned. The rogue is slashing the ropes holding up a huge effigy of a creature with bulls legs, a man's chest, and a cow's head, one hand mangled from a failed tumble check that brought a hoof down to shatter bone and healing potion alike. The Ranger is a whirling death machine, knives flashing as she tears her way free of a group of cowmen and runs toward the Rogue, lowering her shoulder in a classic football rush. The other fighter is standing in front of cleric and the druid, battle axe smashing into foes. There's knife armed monkeys everywhere, a porcu-wolf snarling in from the flanks to savage the wounded cowmen, there's screaming, blood-spray, chanting, and the enraged mooing of cowmen.
"Saduul...."
"Wait for it..."
The largest group is halfway up, the prisoners are rallying around the fighter who is acting like a living banner, the Ranger is digging in her feet and pushing for all she's worth, the cleric fails her attempt at gaining access to her domain spells but manages to summon up another lion to help the battle-axe wielding fighter who is surrounded on all sides by cowmen armed with spears and obsidion chunk embedded swords, the druid orders the tree to stomp on the shrieking shaman of the evil humans just as he successfully banishes it. Lots of good it does him, since a 250 foot tall tree now falls on him and his helpers. Squish. The Barbarian is still reaving through the cowmen.
"Saduul..."
"Wait for it..."
The monk starts to move in front of me, but I grab his arm.
"Wait for it." (In chracter)
"Don't get me killed, man, I don't want to roll up another character." - Out of character.
"Trust me." - Out of Character
The Barbarian is covered in his own blood and that of the cowmen, and is reaving through the cowmen screaming the name of his bloody god. The druid draws her scimitar and blocks the approach of four cowmen. The cleric begins drawing a summoning circle. The fighter, beset on all sides, is just attacking everything near him and trying to hold the line that consists of himself. The fighter leads the prisoners through the press of bodies and into the edge of the jungle. "FIGHT YOUR WAY FREE AND HOLD TOGETHER!" The rogue cuts another rope, ignoring the cruel blows of obsidion and wood swords. The Ranger takes another hit with a javelin, and pushes with everything she has.
With a crack heard over the din of battle, the tree trunk snaps at it's base, and the Ranger sprawls on the ground. Vines snap and the huge effigy falls.
Toward the pyramid.
"NOW!" I yell, cutting loose with a quickened fireball into the effigy, and then a Dispel Magic into the bellowing image above us. The effigy bursts into flame, and crashes into the massed cowmen, just like the monk's player had planned, and the dispel magic dispels the image above us (NATURAL TWENTY BABY!) with a thunderclap. I have less hitpoint after the fire courses through me from powering up spells with blood magic than I had at first level, but I'm alive. At the top of the round, I cast an image of the symbol of Vecna above me.
"THY GOD HAST BEEN OVERCOME!" The monk yells. The remaining cowmen flee into the jungle, wailing at the apparent death of thier god and the flaming destruction rained down upon the mass of cowmen at the base of the pyramid and on it's lower steps.
Only four finish climbing the steps, and the monk mops them up while I use magic missiles to finish off the wounded who are getting to thier feet, smoking and bellowing in rage. (MOOO!)
The survivors flee into the jungle, and we regroup at the base of the pyramid.
"We need to get back, before they mount a counter-assault." the fighter warns.
Limping, we make our way back, arriving back just after midnight.
We know that they are only temporarily thrown back, that thier power is unbroken, and they will be returning. There was at least a dozen different tribes of cowmen, three different tribes of humans present at the pyramid. We rescued prisoners from over two dozen tribes, some as far away as a week's walk.
We need allies. Enemies inland, and enemies who will be approaching from the sea.
The druid summons up spirits of nature and asks thier advice, and the GM calls it for the night. We'll get XP at the beginning of the session, and be able to level if we have the XP, make preperations if we don't. The spirits offer advice. "Gather allies." Gee, thanks. We kind of figured that.
Smoking cigarettes on the front porch, drinking Pepsi Lime, and watching the cops cruise by, I tell the new guy: "Good plan."
Next weekend is going to be a stemwinding bitch, I know already.
So, spirits of ENWorld, any advice?
